How important is user data to you?

[bruce willson]

How much do you spend on user data? Their actions, locations, not just as audience but more than that. Who they are and what they do, how they think.
How much do you invest in the importance of your user data? Or do you feel like as long as I'm getting a paycheck I don't need it?

Do you implement intrusive practices like google and facebook in that you try to almost stalk them?

 

[R4v3nbl4ck]

I spend zero. Google Analytics and Facebook pixel already provide enough data for me, but I understand some business may need more advanced data.

 

[tazarbm]

I don't give a shit about any of these. If I were to play by google's rules and keep up with all of their retarded updates I would have no time to focus on what matters: content and backlinks.

Ok, if you have a big website, brandable and with potential of being sold for millions of USD / EUROS, then yes, spend time to improve and nurture it.

But when you have 10 niche sites / blogs that you are trying to make money with, and when google shits on affiliates every few months, literally knocking their sites off the SERPs it would be silly to waste time analyzing data and making the website user friendly just to see it 6 months later being deindexed by google for whatever dumb reason. It's just not worth it in my opinion. And most people coming to the SEO game usually have small niche blogs, so it's not worth wasting time with analyzing data... well, not in depth anyway

 

[bruce willson]

I don't give a shit about any of these. If I were to play by google's rules and keep up with all of their retarded updates I would have no time to focus on what matters: content and backlinks.

Ok, if you have a big website, brandable and with potential of being sold for millions of USD / EUROS, then yes, spend time to improve and nurture it.

But when you have 10 niche sites / blogs that you are trying to make money with, and when google shits on affiliates every few months, literally knocking their sites off the SERPs it would be silly to waste time analyzing data and making the website user friendly just to see it 6 months later being deindexed by google for whatever dumb reason. It's just not worth it in my opinion. And most people coming to the SEO game usually have small niche blogs, so it's not worth wasting time with analyzing data... well, not in depth anyway

I did not mean it in a simply friendly manner of making things better for them. What I mean is data mining, using it to extract as much money, data results as possible. The description of user friendly doesn't fit it.

 

[TheVigilante]

I did not mean it in a simply friendly manner of making things better for them. What I mean is data mining, using it to extract as much money, data results as possible. The description of user friendly doesn't fit it.

As long as it works for someone why not?

I have come across a couple of smart marketers who are good at that

 

[Willyfish]

Well, I think understanding your customers is the most important. If you have no idea about buyer personas, I don't know how you can speak to people and just make it click for them and why they should care about what someone is saying to them. it's a marketing basic and it's very important. Know your customers exactly and you will have no problem selling what they need...

 

[tazarbm]

I did not mean it in a simply friendly manner of making things better for them. What I mean is data mining, using it to extract as much money, data results as possible. The description of user friendly doesn't fit it.

so I misunderstood you... Sorry, but I have no answer to your question then

 

[SirLouen]

Do you implement intrusive practices like google and facebook in that you try to almost stalk them?

To answer this I would give you a little of my background CPA theory.

I always like to divide a business into 3 tiers

Tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3.
Tier 3 is the lower, the "starter" process, where you start creating your business and start receiving your visits (0-50K MAU)
Tier 2, is where you start to consolidate (50-500K MAU)
Tier 1, is where it has fully bloomed (500K+ MAU just an orientation, it will be much less, like 1/10x for certain industries that are more item exclusive)

I've worked for several years in the 3 tiers. And these are my conclusions:

This kind of data is only valid for tier 1. The amount of processes involved in tier 2 and tier 3 businesses is so extremely high, that it completely eclipse this data analysis work.

For example, branding, similarly to data analysis for CPA is only reserved for Tier 1 businesses. Many people ask in this forum about branding when they have not even reached Tier 2.

Also, there are different players in each tier. Most people in this kind of forums, are always around Tier 3 and Tier 2. Because blackhat techniques are generally growth hacking tools to start fast and furious but decay over time. Any fully bloomed a consolidated business in Tier 1 will not profit much from BH techniques but other things like the ones you comment here (data analytics, data mining and crossing inputs).

Obviously if you are doing FB/GAds or any kind of advertisement, this data retrieved from OTHERS (massive amounts of data 1M MAU at minimum), it's 100% needed. But not from your site (except for the cookie conversion to show in the FB/GAds analytics).

Using analytics data to start the campaign just from your own site, is completely useless on lower tiers (unless you could use it for filtering down, for example, remove all leads outside Minnesota, or remove all leads with age 21 or under for certain campaign where you are selling a very localized product or an adult-only product that just arrived to your stock).

But for example, trying to identify which "sub-group" generates more conversion just by reading my lead list in a Tier 2/3 ecommerce is a 100% waste of time.